The Career Strategy Nobody Talks About — But Everyone Needs
By Digby R. Kerr · Kerr University™ · · All Articles
For the first fifteen years of my career, I had a plan that consisted entirely of one idea: work hard, and good things will follow. It worked, to a point. I was reliable, I was promoted a few times, and I was — by most measures — doing fine.
Then I watched a colleague with less experience than me get chosen to lead a major account I had wanted for years. I was angry about it for about a week. Then I did something useful: I asked him, directly, how it happened.
His answer changed how I think about careers permanently. He said, "I made sure the right three people knew what I was good at, before the opportunity existed."
The Strategy Nobody Talks About
Most career advice focuses on performance — do excellent work and you'll be recognized. This is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Excellent work that no one with influence over your next opportunity knows about is invisible work. And invisible work, no matter how good, cannot be rewarded with a decision someone hasn't yet thought to make.
The strategy is this: identify, in advance, who will make the decisions that shape your next two career moves — and make sure they have an accurate picture of what you do well, before they need to make those decisions.
This is not self-promotion in the way that phrase is usually meant. It is not about exaggerating, name-dropping, or making noise. It is about closing the gap between the work you actually do and what the people who matter believe about you.
How to Apply It
1. Make a short list. Two or three people whose decisions will most shape your next opportunity. Often it's not just your direct manager.
2. Find natural moments. A project update, a hallway conversation, a thoughtful question in a meeting — these are the moments where an accurate impression gets built, quietly, over time.
3. Let your results speak specifically. Not "the project went well" but "we cut processing time by 22%, which is the difference Q3 needed." Specific numbers travel further than general impressions.
The reframe: Visibility is not vanity. It is the difference between being considered for an opportunity and never being in the room where it's decided.
The bottom line: Doing great work is the price of admission. Making sure the right people know about it is the strategy that actually moves your career.
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